Destruction of war depicted in Small Pain in My Chest

Give the terrible image of the war as presented in the poem Small Pain in My Chest by Michael Mack. Or, Give an account of the destruction/ devastation of war given in the poem. Or, Describe the experience of the narrator in the battlefield last night.

The soldier boy gives an account of what happened the previous night. He says that a troop of two hundred soldiers climbed the hill. When they reached the top, there was an explosion and he got the small pain in his chest. After that there was constant firing from both sides. The boy in the poem recalls how he kept on firing till he could. He was amidst the deep craters and the dead bodies of his fellow soldiers. Finally he had to sit down with the pain in his chest. He then felt lucky to have survived the initial blow. But we, the readers of the poem, know what happened at last. The soldier boy succumbed to his injury.

This is all we know of the battle from the poem itself. But this short description is enough to give us a shiver down the spine. It delivers the poet’s message that war can cause no good. It indeed takes the human civilization a step backward.